Week 4
Forces and Earthquakes
This week we will learn a little about the way that forces, created by movements in the Earth and transferred by waves through the crust, damage structures and create a threat to built environments.
Day 1
Newton's first law states that a body in motion will stay in motion and a body at rest will stay at rest unless acted on by an outside force. This is called inertia. It is the tendency of something to stay the way it is. The law of inertia is important when talking about buildings in an earthquake.Â
In the video watch the spaces between buildings, antennas on top of buildings, and the movement of objects within buildings.
Use a stack of ten pennies and a slip of paper to do the following experiment:
Put the stack of pennies on the slip of paper and then quickly pull the slip out from under it.
Pull the slip out slower and slower until you see a pattern in the way that the pennies end up.
Correlate the direction of movement of the slip and the pattern of the stack. Relate that to structures damaged by earthquakes.
Day 2
Free Body Diagram
Day 3
Virtual Lab using PhET simulation in Google Classroom called Acceleration and Newton's Second Law of Motion.
Day 4
Complete the Combining Forces Worksheet (available as a printout in class or complete online in Google Classroom ONLY if you were absent). Study the Study Guide below when you are done.
Study Guide
Understand Newton's First Law of Motion and how it relates to structural damage in earthquakes.
Know how to calculate the net force on an object.
Know how to recognize balanced and unbalanced forces by analyzing free body diagrams and simulations.
Know when an object will accelerate or not based on the forces applied to it.
Know how to calculate force, mass, or acceleration given two of the three variables.
Recognize force, mass, and acceleration from their units.
Know the relationships between force, mass, and acceleration. Ex. If I double force, what happens to acceleration etc.
Know what a vector is and what that means.
Know the direction of friction in relation to an applied force.
Given a free body diagram, forces, and the mass of an object, determine the acceleration of an object and the speed of that object over time.
Day 5
Study for 15 minutes.
Quiz in Google Classroom